The Avengers - Tunnel of Fear (PG.)
Directed by Guy Verney. 1961
Starring Ian Hendry, Patrick Macnee, Ingrid Hafner, Anthony Bate, Miranda Connell, Hazel Coppen. Black and white. 52 mins. Available on DVD from Studiocanal, August 9th.
In its 8 years of existence The Avengers went through as much change and evolution as Doctor Who or the big screen James Bond have managed in over five decades. The frothy, frivolous entertainment of the Diana Rigg/ Linda Thorson era started off as a much more downbeat affair in which Mr John Steed (Macnee) was partnered by a Dr David Keel (Hendry.) Because they were often shot and broadcast live most of the series has been lost. This, one of only three surviving episodes, was discovered in 2016.
Because of this it is hard to say to what degree the programme developed during its first incarnation. But among the extras for the season 5 box set was the beginning of the first episode Hot Snow, where Hendry's wife is murdered by a drugs gang, and a trench-coated Steed pops up to engage the doctor's assistance in collaring them and getting his revenge. (So that's why it's called the Avengers; in theory, even Purdey and Gambit were still busy avenging Mrs Keel's demise in the late 1970s when the New Avengers brought Steed back to the screen.)
What remains suggests the show was initially a more down-to-earth crime show. By the time the series had made it round to the Tunnel of Fear, episode 20, which featured an international espionage gang whose activities revolve around a ghost train in a Southend fairground, it is reasonable to assume that the show had definitely moved into a lighter vein. The nonsense premise would be at home in the late incarnations but at this stage, the production wasn't quite ready to embrace those levels of foolishness.
At the beginning, an escaped prisoner Harry Black (Bate) barges into the Keel surgery demanding treatment for the broken glass in his back and talking about how he'd been framed for a robbery at the Southend funfair where he'd used to work. And then Steed ambles in and says that it just so happens he's been looking into that very same funfair and then we're off. When Keel comments that we sure can pick em, his receptionist responds that maybe they pick us, surely a knowing wink at the contrivances of the show's set up.
Hendry and Macnee make for an odd double act. Squint-eyed and serious Hendry's Keel is the man who isn't in on the joke, and probably wouldn't want to be even if invited. Macnee's Steed is already having a whale of a time. His is the world of old school tie privilege, while middle class, hard-working professional Keel is the grammar school boy making something of himself. He's only a beat or two away from becoming an Angry Young Man; he's middle class responsibility, there to make sure Steed's cavalier approach doesn't mess everything up.
Hendry was a fantastic actor and appeared in some memorable roles: it was his character in Get Carter that Caine describes as having eyes like two pissholes in snow and he also turns up in Polanski's Repulsion and Antonioni's The Passenger. He was never though a barrel of laughs. (In the extras he says he studied comedy and was a sidekick to Bozo the clown.) He bristled with intensity in everything he does and you'd imagine any character around him having to live their life on eggshells. He would quit after this first season, citing a fear of typecasting, and you can see that even at this stage the show was pulling in two directions.
So is this episode any good? Well, objectively not really. In those days, everything was shot on sets and you can sense the frantic movement off camera trying to get everything and everyone into position for the next scene. Given the technical limitations it's amazing what they achieved, but even so, it just seems like a lot of rather pointless too-ing and fro-ing rather than anything that could be called drama. We go here, then to here, then to here, then back to the first place and things are discussed, guns are occasionally pointed, everybody seems terribly concerned about it but this urgency isn't transferred to the viewer.
It's all surprisingly saucy too. There is a troop of scantily clad belly dancers who are on screen for as long as can be gotten away and get touched up by Steed who has taken over as their show barker. Also, Black's girlfriend is introduced to us in her bra while she is doing the ironing.
Extras
Apart from brief interviews with Hendry in 1962, and Macnee in 1964, the rest of it seems to be a promotional tie-in with Big Finish production, the company that does books and audio version of British cult shows. Their main thing is Doctor Who, filling in the many missing episodes, but here they have an audio version of Tunnel of Fear, plus some of their visual reconstructions of lost episodes in which a narrator tells the story over surviving still photographs made of the production. These are valuable recreations but for obsessives only – not that being obsessive about The Avengers is anything to be sneered at. It is one of this nation's great cultural achievements.
Directed by Guy Verney. 1961
Starring Ian Hendry, Patrick Macnee, Ingrid Hafner, Anthony Bate, Miranda Connell, Hazel Coppen. Black and white. 52 mins. Available on DVD from Studiocanal, August 9th.
In its 8 years of existence The Avengers went through as much change and evolution as Doctor Who or the big screen James Bond have managed in over five decades. The frothy, frivolous entertainment of the Diana Rigg/ Linda Thorson era started off as a much more downbeat affair in which Mr John Steed (Macnee) was partnered by a Dr David Keel (Hendry.) Because they were often shot and broadcast live most of the series has been lost. This, one of only three surviving episodes, was discovered in 2016.
Because of this it is hard to say to what degree the programme developed during its first incarnation. But among the extras for the season 5 box set was the beginning of the first episode Hot Snow, where Hendry's wife is murdered by a drugs gang, and a trench-coated Steed pops up to engage the doctor's assistance in collaring them and getting his revenge. (So that's why it's called the Avengers; in theory, even Purdey and Gambit were still busy avenging Mrs Keel's demise in the late 1970s when the New Avengers brought Steed back to the screen.)
What remains suggests the show was initially a more down-to-earth crime show. By the time the series had made it round to the Tunnel of Fear, episode 20, which featured an international espionage gang whose activities revolve around a ghost train in a Southend fairground, it is reasonable to assume that the show had definitely moved into a lighter vein. The nonsense premise would be at home in the late incarnations but at this stage, the production wasn't quite ready to embrace those levels of foolishness.
At the beginning, an escaped prisoner Harry Black (Bate) barges into the Keel surgery demanding treatment for the broken glass in his back and talking about how he'd been framed for a robbery at the Southend funfair where he'd used to work. And then Steed ambles in and says that it just so happens he's been looking into that very same funfair and then we're off. When Keel comments that we sure can pick em, his receptionist responds that maybe they pick us, surely a knowing wink at the contrivances of the show's set up.
Hendry and Macnee make for an odd double act. Squint-eyed and serious Hendry's Keel is the man who isn't in on the joke, and probably wouldn't want to be even if invited. Macnee's Steed is already having a whale of a time. His is the world of old school tie privilege, while middle class, hard-working professional Keel is the grammar school boy making something of himself. He's only a beat or two away from becoming an Angry Young Man; he's middle class responsibility, there to make sure Steed's cavalier approach doesn't mess everything up.
Hendry was a fantastic actor and appeared in some memorable roles: it was his character in Get Carter that Caine describes as having eyes like two pissholes in snow and he also turns up in Polanski's Repulsion and Antonioni's The Passenger. He was never though a barrel of laughs. (In the extras he says he studied comedy and was a sidekick to Bozo the clown.) He bristled with intensity in everything he does and you'd imagine any character around him having to live their life on eggshells. He would quit after this first season, citing a fear of typecasting, and you can see that even at this stage the show was pulling in two directions.
So is this episode any good? Well, objectively not really. In those days, everything was shot on sets and you can sense the frantic movement off camera trying to get everything and everyone into position for the next scene. Given the technical limitations it's amazing what they achieved, but even so, it just seems like a lot of rather pointless too-ing and fro-ing rather than anything that could be called drama. We go here, then to here, then to here, then back to the first place and things are discussed, guns are occasionally pointed, everybody seems terribly concerned about it but this urgency isn't transferred to the viewer.
It's all surprisingly saucy too. There is a troop of scantily clad belly dancers who are on screen for as long as can be gotten away and get touched up by Steed who has taken over as their show barker. Also, Black's girlfriend is introduced to us in her bra while she is doing the ironing.
Extras
Apart from brief interviews with Hendry in 1962, and Macnee in 1964, the rest of it seems to be a promotional tie-in with Big Finish production, the company that does books and audio version of British cult shows. Their main thing is Doctor Who, filling in the many missing episodes, but here they have an audio version of Tunnel of Fear, plus some of their visual reconstructions of lost episodes in which a narrator tells the story over surviving still photographs made of the production. These are valuable recreations but for obsessives only – not that being obsessive about The Avengers is anything to be sneered at. It is one of this nation's great cultural achievements.
